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Connell School of Nursing 1976 alumna Marianne Lille, a registered nurse and case manager at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Emergency Department, will give a talk on April 30 at noon in celebration of the “Notes on Nursing: Past, Present and Future” exhibition now on display in Burns Library.
The exhibition, featuring items from the Josephine A. Dolan Collection of Nursing History — including original letters by Florence Nightingale — is on display at the Ford Tower at the Burns Library through June 1.
Lille, who also holds a master’s of education from BC, has been at Beth Israel Deaconess since 2005. She was previously regional director for case management at Kindred Healthcare.
Comprising the Dolan Collection is a first edition (1859) of Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not, letters, books, photographs, engravings, a 19th century pharmaceutical cabinet, and other artifacts collected by nursing professor and historian Josephine A. Dolan (1913–2004).
A featured item in the exhibition is an original letter written by Nightingale, dated April 1, 1855, from the barracks hospital in Scutari, Turkey. In the letter to an acquaintance, Nightingale laments the toll that dysentery has taken on some people of their mutual acquaintance. In February 1855, the death rate at the barracks hospital in Scutari where Nightingale was posted, was 42 percent. A few months later, the death rate had decreased to 2 percent.
Prior to Nightingale’s arrival, sanitary conditions at this hospital were so deplorable that a royal inquiry was put in place to investigate the horrible illnesses and sufferings of soldiers in Scutari. Nightingale wrote to Britain’s secretary of war Sidney Herbert to offer her services. Nightingale arrived in Scutari on Nov. 4, 1854 and she spent many hours in the wards, patrolling with a lamp to give personal care to the wounded. Thus she became known as the “Lady with the Lamp.”
Dolan became the first instructor in the School of Nursing at the University of Connecticut in 1944. At UConn, she taught a course on the history of nursing, often using primary sources to illustrate this subject to her students. She pursued nursing history for the remainder of her lengthy career, including her work with the Committee on Historic Source Materials in Nursing.
Dolan received an honorary degree from Boston College in 1987.